


A Royal Revel

by SpangleBangle



Series: Thominho Week 2016 [5]
Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: Day 5 - Royal/Historical, Established Relationship, F/F, Fae & Fairies, I was experimenting a bit and it got out of hand, M/M, Magic, Non-Explicit Sex, Platonic Minho&Brenda, Platonic Thomas&Teresa, Purple Prose, Secret Relationship, Seelie Court, Smut, Thominho Week 2016, Unseelie Court, but purple vague smut, so much purple, they're all each other's beards basically I hope it makes sense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 21:50:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7285999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpangleBangle/pseuds/SpangleBangle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Day 5 - Royal/Historical</p><p>For the beings of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, they can only meet twice a year without animosity or agenda. This time, it's the turn of summer and the transfer of power from Unseelie to Seelie, and the opportunity for separated lovers to meet once again, for just one night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Royal Revel

**Author's Note:**

> I got a bit fancy with the prompt again, oops. Hope you enjoy :)

Small note - the rest of my fills for the week might be uploaded a bit early or late as I've got some time and scheduling clashes this weekend. But they're all written and will all be uploaded to the collection :)

* * *

Minho sat quietly on the lesser throne, watching his queen pace around the throne room. Her gossamer dress swirled iridescent around her, like beetle’s backs and hummingbird wings and the sheen of a waterfall all mixed into one heady flash of colour with every step of her graceful feet. Her gorgeous brown skin shimmered in the low light and her short, midnight hair fanned around her temples like finest dandelion fluff. She was like one of the ancient earth goddesses, beautiful and entrancing and with more power at her fingertips than any other soul.

He shook his head a little as if to clear water from his ears; her glamour was stronger than ever, with today being the first day of spring. Even he was being affected by it, and he had no inclination for women. The rest of the Seelie Court watched her, dazzled and enthralled. Those with more power, like himself, were able to parse the glamour and clear their heads, but the lesser fey were hopelessly absorbed. Some of the humans of the court were having real trouble staying still and not throwing themselves at her feet in slavering adoration.

“Attend me, Prince Consort,” she called in her vibrant, bell-shimmer voice. He was at her side in an instant, while the command had the lesser fey trembling rapturously.

“Yes, my Queen?” He murmured deferentially. He noticed the court reacting to his voice similarly and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. While it was true his power was second only to the queen, he found their inability to control themselves irritating. It took so little effort to clear one’s head.

“She will come, yes?” She asked tensely.

He skimmed his hand down her arm, a gesture so informal the court gasped and moaned enviously. Minho ignored them.

“Brenda,” He whispered with a smile, the use of her familiar name a privilege very few were allowed. “She would never stay away. Even if she wanted to, it’s the first day of spring. She must hand over to you.”

The Seelie queen nodded thoughtfully, then smiled like sunshine and graced his cheek with an affectionate kiss.

“They will come,” She nodded confidently. “You’re quite right.”

“I’m always right,” Minho teased cheekily, his smile making some of the humans fall to their knees. It was moronic, really.

The queen laughed, a sound like hundreds of tiny chimes tinkling all at once in an errant breeze. Minho didn’t even check on the condition of the court. It would only disgust him.

The queen patted his cheek fondly, then turned with liquid grace as a messenger approached.

“My Queen,” the young sidhe bowed. “The Unseelie Court approaches.”

A rustle swept through the court, and Minho’s queen straightened her back, seeming to grow taller and even more devastating. Minho stood at her side, knowing from the eyes on him that his own natural glamour was reacting to hers, amplifying and deepening his own aura. Excitement thudded in his unearthly veins as they waited for the procession of their darker kindred.

Whispers preceded them, like half-heard snatches of cold laughter on a windy night. Their trooping parade swirled into the great tree-fringed dell of the Seelie Court like a blast of arctic wind. They were dark and stark, all pale skin and swooping dark hair, harsh monochrome and wintry blues. Their powers, and consequently their glamours, were weakened at this turn of seasons and the beginning of Seelie reign, but they were still grimly beautiful. While the Seelie captivated with sunny charm and woodsy manners, shimmers and flowers and flowing grace, the Unseelie enthralled with cold mystique and dangerous, glittering smiles of needlepointed teeth, harsher than a landslip or sudden avalanche.

The Unseelie Queen was, naturally, the most beautiful and terrifying of all her court. Raven-wing hair flowed to her feet and her skin was paler and brighter than freshest snow under the never-setting sun of the far north, her lips the red of holly berries and just as perilous as their barbed leaves. Her eyes were the pale, sharp blue of a glacier and they seemed to see right to your core.

Minho pulled his eyes from her and her fearsome glamour to the person he really wanted to see – the Unseelie Consort. His opposite number and even more beautiful to Minho than winter’s queen. _Thomas_ , his heart whispered, forbidden knowledge like a coal under his breastbone, pulsing in time with his heart. He was made of sharp angles and impossible edges, his cheeks hollowed and the bones leaping out razor-sharp. His eyes were large and dark, seeming to absorb all light at his whim. His mouth held a knowing curl and his frame was whip-thin. He always reminded Minho of a silver birch in winter – tall and ethereally stark, limbs long and bare of unnecessary decoration. He was made of glittering frost and the deceptively thin ice covering a deep lake. A spirit of secrets and wit that could be merry as easily as cruel, tricks and mischief at his slender fingertips.

Minho hungered for him like he ached for sunlight in summer, for water, for laughter and heat and flight through the trees.

The queens approached each other, almost too stunning to behold. The lesser fey of both courts were on their knees, the thralls flat on their faces.

“My dear,” The Unseelie queen smiled with an edge like a blood-coated knife. “You are radiant as ever. Spring suits you.”

“Yet your own beauty is hardly dimmed by the turn of seasons,” Minho’s queen answered as they exchanged polite, distant kisses of each other’s cheeks. Their hands grasped with a need that only Minho and Thomas knew, the strain of holding back for proper etiquette when all that was wanted was to clutch, and scratch, and claim after half a year of separation.

Minho met Thomas’ forceful, shadowy gaze. The consorts were not supposed to acknowledge each other, so no greetings or polite kisses were given. But they could look, and hunger.

“I welcome you to my Court,” Minho’s queen said, after giving a brief speech regarding the change of seasons and the need for both courts to come together to celebrate. Minho barely listened – he was watching Thomas’ hands ball into fists of frustration. The chill emanating from him was palpable and dewed on Minho’s firebrand skin, as imbued as he was with the flush of new sun on a ripe flower meadow.

The Unseelie queen made an answering speech about the handover of power and the need for grace and growth in the world, of joyous celebration and unity on this occasion. Minho felt the power of her words but was distanced from it; there was a delicate arrangement of teardrop icicles forming the Unseelie Consort’s crown, hanging on threads of spun spider silk interlaced with his fine, smoke-and-shadow hair. He was so beautiful Minho’s breath was steaming on the charged air between them. To others it would seem like purest animosity, the way they stared each other down and brought their powers to the fore. But they could not feel what the consorts felt, what the queens felt for each other. To a being with true power, the only appealing thing could be the precise reverse. As sunlight was most brilliant after darkest storm, the dark craved the light and heat yearned for ice to thaw and flicker through its flames in an impossible dance.

Minho’s queen clapped her hands and fountains of wine and ale and every spirit imaginable began flowing, while trestle tables bowed under the weight of steaming food. The trees blossomed and bore lush fruit in the space between heartbeats, and the pungent aromas of spring and summer swept over the company.

“Let the celebrations begin,” She announced in a ringing voice, and all were freed from their spell of adoration. Music was struck and lines formed, the courts partnering each other as was tradition for the first dance. Minho tore his eyes from Thomas with difficulty and bowed to the Unseelie queen.

“My Lady,” He kissed into the back of her ice-cold hand. “May I have this dance?”

“You may, Seelie Consort,” she granted graciously. Her glamour overwhelmed him for a moment, but then he heard Thomas’ fluting voice copying his request to Minho’s queen, and he could think clearly again. Minho led her to the dancefloor and held her respectfully. Her hands sucked the warmth from his own fire-hot skin and Minho tried not to remember the way Thomas’ fingers could dance over him like snowfall, teasing and causing pleasant shivers of sensation, rather than the overwhelming chill of the Unseelie queen. He supposed she found his own skin merely unpleasantly lukewarm, preferring as she did the magma-boil of Brenda’s kiss.

They moved into the first steps with all the animal grace fey of their caste possessed by nature’s right.

“Winter this year was magnificent,” he complimented her as they danced, both sets of eyes seeking the other pair of Brenda and Thomas, who sought them out likewise.

“Thank you,” she inclined her head. “Summer looks to be well on its way to wondrousness already.”

He thanked her in a murmur and felt his heart clench at the elegance with which Thomas moved on the dancefloor.

Dances were swirled through, food was consumed and wine was drunk in great quantities as the courts united in revelry, one of only two nights when it was possible each year. The royalty of each court kept a polite distance in front of their subjects, but their eyes were constantly fixed on their opposite numbers, yearning and need flowing like the hot blood in their veins.

The moon was high overhead and the revels were spiralling into heady madness as winter relinquished its power and summer began to blossom. Minho saw his queen become ever more devastatingly beautiful as the power of summer filled her more with every passing heartbeat, and felt the vibrant energy of it filling his own body. He felt drunk on it after the long deprivation of winter’s chill and knew he was turning heads from both courts as he danced with the many waiting for his favour, though none were who he wanted to take in his arms tonight. He received many kisses and breathless pleas, Seelie and Unseelie alike, but none were who he wanted. He cut through their ranks like a scythe through budding wheat, leaving his would-be suitors weak and legless with disappointment after only the touch of his hand, the grace of a smile, or a brief step about the dancefloor.

He found the Unseelie consort lurking under the glorious sweep of a willow tree by the sparkling stream, turned silver under the merriment of the moon and stars high above. His power was as diminished as Minho’s was blooming, but he was still as coldly beautiful as ever. He clutched at the tree’s bark when Minho stepped though the fall of branches and concealing leaves, looking dizzy. Minho knew he should make an effort to rein in his much-grown aura of summery authority but it was beyond him for the moment, he was so filled with the fresh flush of spring and promise of summer.

“Minho,” The Unseelie consort whispered prayerfully, midnight eyes wide and adoring. He might be dazed by Minho’s aura but his words were clear, present, knowing, genuine. Pulled from the honest well of his heart. “You are a sunbeam held in amber. Forest fire on the darkest night. Most beautiful spark to tinder. A meadow’s riot at sunset.”

Their bodies collided against the tree’s trunk, shaking and needy and finally connected again. Their mouths sought each other desperately as moans spilled from their greedy lips, hands chasing over each other to burn and freeze in turn, a delicious torture of sensation. Thomas’ lips were like drops of ice on Minho’s feverish flesh, leaving pale kisses wherever they touched. The crown of ivy was knocked from Minho’s hair and Thomas’ icicles melted from the steam of Minho’s breath. Clothes were shredded like cobwebs and they made their bed on the roots of the tree, winter and summer crashing together like lightning and rain after hot wind and burgeoning humidity. The cool, damp earth bathed their bones and the tree swallowed their rapturous voices, a screen of privacy in more than simple vision. Winter joyfully bowed to summer and rejoiced in the power of submission to fiery heat after long cold as they bore their love and need for each other bare on their flesh over and over, like thunderclaps through a never-ending storm. Their true names were moaned and screamed and panted, whispered most intimate and yelled most wild for no one to hear but themselves shielded in the tree’s boughs.

“Joyous Springtime, Minho,” Thomas panted breathlessly into his ear.

“Joyous Springtime, Thomas,” Minho replied with a grin.

 


End file.
